BlackBerry on the Ropes

According to a Computerworld article, BlackBerry is exploring putting itself up for sale, as the company falls into 4th place in the mobile market. IDC statistics that show Android leads the mobile market with nearly 80%, iOS has 13.2%, Windows Phone 3.7%, and BlackBerry 2.9%. Gartner analyst Bill Menezes states that even new ownership is “not going to address how the company restores itself.”

One key asset BlackBerry owns is QNX, the real-time based OS it bought in 2010. QNX is microkernel based, versus the monolithic kernel used by many OS’s like Linux. BlackBerry bases its tablet and phone OS’s on QNX, which also remains a popular commercial OS for embedded systems.

I don’t think it’s been open sourced before i might be wrong, i think the only thing they did was to release the OS free of charge for you to play on, on a single floppy, it was amazing!

I don’t recall it being open source either, not the entire OS anyway. I do remember free releases of QNX-Neutrino (Neutrino was the name of the desktop environment) though. Not only were they full ISO-based desktop installs, but there was also a separate ISO of third-part software that had been ported to QNX.

It all ran very well on a Pentium 3. One thing I remember specifically, that QNX could properly detect and utilize my dial-up PCI modem while various Linux distros could not.

I installed and ran QNX for years on a dual-boot computer, and still have all of those discs from the different free versions. Checking the stash of CDs, it appears that 6.21 may have been the final free version, or at least the last that I downloaded. Then it changed owners or something, and was locked up as a commercial product.

No it won’t and its for the same reason why MozPhone will be lucky if it breaks low single digits and why UbuntuPhone would have been DOA, and that is because Android is already FOSS and more importantly has the network effect.

At the end of the day if you don’t support either Android or Apple apps you are dead meat, most devs simply aren’t gonna bother wasting the money porting to a device with a tiny userbase compared to the big two. I’ll never forget one of the devs of a popular game (sorry I can’t find the link ATM) who was asked why he ported an older version of his game to WinPhone and he simply said “MSFT paid the $$$$$ in porting costs”. RIM simply doesn’t have the funds to afford to do that and without apps its toast.

There simply is no longer a big selling point for Blackberry, even the PHB corporate managers are all carrying iPhones or high end Android phones, and to get people to switch you have to not just be as good as the other guy but a hell of a lot better and Blackberry simply isn’t. Making it FOSS wouldn’t change any of that, RIM is toast.

The biggest tragedy in all of this is how avoidable it all was. BBRY didn’t have to roll their own OS, or try to bootstrap their own ecosystem.

Qt didn’t save them, the hoards of Qt developers never materialized. Android compatibility for apps didn’t save them as that just got them foreign feeling, badly performing apps. Certainly full multitasking wasn’t the draw they hoped it was, or physical keyboards.

BBRY needed a strong partner with loads of cash, but they stubbornly and foolishly turned down Microsofts olive branch. Now they will die, Nokia will live, and the Canadian former powerhouse will be picked apart by the vultures.

BBRY needed a strong partner with loads of cash, but they stubbornly and foolishly turned down Microsofts olive branch. Now they will die, Nokia will live, and the Canadian former powerhouse will be picked apart by the vultures.

Only Nelson could write something like this while keeping a straight face.

Nokia outsold BBRY and has been posting double digit gains for three consecutive quarters. If the trend continues, they’ll crack the Top 5 OEMs before the year ends. All indicators suggest the trend will indeed continue into Q3.

Meanwhile BBRY will go the way of Palm. Inconvenient truth for you or not, but that’s how things are going.

Nokia outsold BBRY and has been posting double digit gains for three consecutive quarters. If the trend continues, they’ll crack the Top 5 OEMs before the year ends. All indicators suggest the trend will indeed continue into Q3.

Meanwhile BBRY will go the way of Palm. Inconvenient truth for you or not, but that’s how things are going.

This is what Nokia would be going through had they stuck with MeeGo.

I have no stake in Blackberry or in MeeGo. What I found amusing about your line was the way that you see everything-Microsoft as good/superior. By the way, that doesn’t have to mean you are wrong, although I think the long term verdict of both WinPhone and Nokia is still to be seen.

What would have happened if BBRY had chosen WinPhone, or if Nokia and BBRY had both chosen to do Android phones we will never know. Likewise it is hard to predict the outcome if a much larger player like Nokia had seriously pushed MeeGo phones. Yet you managed to state as fact in one line the only true solution.

Getting back into the top 5? Nokia were number 1 in phones for many years, so overall they have fallen a huge way.

I never understand why people bring this up, its obvious that they aren’t where they were. What should also be a self evident truth is that you don’t get back there overnight (if at all), and they don’t need to be back there to “right the ship” so to speak.

Huh? No, let me get this straight to you, from a developer point of view.

Every developer on Earth was on bed with Nokia going MeeGo and Qt. Everybody. We were all delighted because the portability of Qt meant we could develop a single C++ codebase and reuse most of it. You could have gone and ask the top 1,000 development houses and they all had said “yes, we are going to develop for MeeGo” without blinking.

Now, when Nokia decided to change from MeeGo to Windows Phone 7.5, 99% of the developers thought Nokia was crazy. They lost most of the developer community and nobody can tell me otherwise because I saw it from inside!

WP 7.5 required to develop from scratch because you could only do .NET or Silverlight (which is WPF “light”). Who was going to develop for WP 7.5? Nobody. The few developers who had tried to develop for WP7 had lost it all because nobody was buying WP devices. Not only that, WP 7.5 was so crappy it was plain impossible to get something decent done on that platform!

If Nokia had kept on the MeeGo plan, they would be #2 today (behind Android because, you know, every brand and their neighbor are releasing Android phones).

Huh? No, let me get this straight to you, from a developer point of view.

This should be interesting.

Every developer on Earth was on bed with Nokia going MeeGo and Qt. Everybody. We were all delighted because the portability of Qt meant we could develop a single C++ codebase and reuse most of it.

It is interesting, because every developer on Earth does not use Qt, or even cared about MeeGo. Let’s tone down the exaggerations a bit. It may be fair to say a sizable amount were interested in MeeGo, but was it more than the 30,000 Windows Phone developers Microsoft had around launch?

And is the potential target demographic for Qt larger than for .NET? There are an estimated 8 million .NET developers (as of 2012).

You could have gone and ask the top 1,000 development houses and they all had said “yes, we are going to develop for MeeGo” without blinking.

That’s completely unfounded and speculative on your part.

Now, when Nokia decided to change from MeeGo to Windows Phone 7.5, 99% of the developers thought Nokia was crazy. They lost most of the developer community and nobody can tell me otherwise because I saw it from inside!

99%? Top 1000 shops? Every developer on earth? Are you going to just keep making statistics up?

WP 7.5 required to develop from scratch because you could only do .NET or Silverlight (which is WPF “light”).

It required a rewrite from scratch unless..you used Silverlight or WPF or had an existing .NET application.

There were over 100 million Silverlight downloads and thousands of Silverlight developers, and a ton of Microsoft shops adopted it for LOB purposes.

Who was going to develop for WP 7.5? Nobody. The few developers who had tried to develop for WP7 had lost it all because nobody was buying WP devices.

That’s an overstatement. There were tens of thousands of Windows Phone developers at launch. A lot of developers, ones I know personally made a decent amount of money on Windows Phone by being the first in the store — furthermore Windows Phone growth has accelerated since then and I myself extract a decent amount of revenue from the Store.

Not only that, WP 7.5 was so crappy it was plain impossible to get something decent done on that platform!

Obviously it depends, all platforms have limitations, and there is a lot that Qt and QML make plain difficult.

If Nokia had kept on the MeeGo plan, they would be #2 today (behind Android because, you know, every brand and their neighbor are releasing Android phones).

It is interesting, because every developer on Earth does not use Qt, or even cared about MeeGo. Let’s tone down the exaggerations a bit. It may be fair to say a sizable amount were interested in MeeGo, but was it more than the 30,000 Windows Phone developers Microsoft had around launch?

Every developer who developed for Nokia platforms was already into Qt or getting into Qt. And yes, that’s way more than the 30,000 WP Microsoft REPORTED to have around launch.

And I say REPORTED because WP users are still expecting those developers to show and actually DEVELOP anything. The amount and quality of applications in the Microsoft store is laughable!

And is the potential target demographic for Qt larger than for .NET? There are an estimated 8 million .NET developers (as of 2012).

Still waiting for those 8 million developers to show in WP…

That’s completely unfounded and speculative on your part.

That’s based on actual statistics. It looks like you were not in the Nokia ecosystem, which was the dominant

It required a rewrite from scratch unless..you used Silverlight or WPF or had an existing .NET application.

There were over 100 million Silverlight downloads and thousands of Silverlight developers, and a ton of Microsoft shops adopted it for LOB purposes.

Still waiting for those applications to be ported…

Oh wait, in case you were invested in Silverlight: Microsoft killed it!

A lot of developers, ones I know personally made a decent amount of money on Windows Phone by being the first in the store — furthermore Windows Phone growth has accelerated since then and I myself extract a decent amount of revenue from the Store.

Well, congratulations, because that’s the opposite experience everybody I have talked to have. I know people who are making more money in BlackBerry than in Windows Phone!

Obviously it depends, all platforms have limitations, and there is a lot that Qt and QML make plain difficult.

Errr… OK, I will not take that into account. Free piece of advice: do not ever compare WP7.5 + Silverlight to Meego + Qt and QML (there’s widgets, too, in addition to QML) or you will be laughed at.

$3,600 for Windows Phone, $4,700 for Android, and $5,200 for iOS in monthly revenue. What’s impressive about the stat is that Windows Phone volumes are nowhere near the top two, but developer revenue per month is.

This is a testament to a few things (imo): Carrier billing, Paid trial conversions, App store security from piracy, propensity of users of the platform to purchase apps (Android is notoriously bad at this) and saturation of the competing mobile platforms, which makes visibility take a nosedive.

I think quality is a bit of a misnomer in that it heavily depends on familiarity with the toolset and with the design language of the OS — something that has taken shops a while to become proficient at. What is good is that Windows Phone 8 applications, especially the ones launching recently from major brands are becoming better and better.

What’s also good is that small time developers are also making compelling looking apps. That’s from my own personal use of apps on the store, so obviously YMMV but something tells me you haven’t taken a look in a while.

Still waiting for those 8 million developers to show in WP…

You don’t need to wait, I’ve more than shown that there is incredible momentum around Windows Phone, obviously it will never be a 1:1 transition but it does show a potential maximum upside.

It is nonsensical to not see an upside in Windows Phone, when it shares commonality with Windows itself which has an installed base of over 1.5 billion (and in fact Windows 8 is installed on around 6% of PCs worldwide, moving it to over 100 million actual copies sold to end users by now).

Oh wait, in case you were invested in Silverlight: Microsoft killed it!

Silverlight is not dead, in case you missed it, Silverlight powers Windows Phone 8 which as I’ve shown has had rapid developer attention.

What is dead is Silverlight as a browser plugin and desktop technology, but as we all painfully know, what’s dead isn’t “dead” in the enterprise. Enterprises are still using Windows XP for crying out loud, they aren’t going to dump Silverlight LOB deployments over night. Actually, I know they don’t, because my contracted work tells me this.

Well, congratulations, because that’s the opposite experience everybody I have talked to have. I know people who are making more money in BlackBerry than in Windows Phone!

Talk to more people, I guess, is all I can say. I really don’t know what you want me to say.

Errr… OK, I will not take that into account. Free piece of advice: do not ever compare WP7.5 + Silverlight to Meego + Qt and QML (there’s widgets, too, in addition to QML) or you will be laughed at.

I can, and will. I’ve used both and I know the limitations of both very well, so I’d caution you. If you want to get into this conversation we can.

Uh, what? In hindsight there’s no doubt RIM’s future would have been much brighter by now if they had accepted MS offer. The harsh truth is that they missed the boat and no-one gives a shit about BBRY any more, not even the enterprise customers.

True, both routes carried some risk, but I think WP was by far the least risky. They would’ve had an ecosystem, support from MSFT, if they went the tablet route they’d have a ready made tablet OS as well, and been probably preferred to Nokia for enterprise deployments.

By no means a guarantee, but I think in hindsight they took the wrong bet. I wouldn’t have minded BB10 though, so its a shame to see it going away.

An interesting question is what does BBRY do next, I think they have a decent amount of cash left, not sure off hand but they might be able to divest from handsets and focus on some niche.

Point taken. Perhaps “no doubt” and “much better” was a bit of an exaggeration but I still think it’s more likely they’d been better off if backed by a major player with some serious capital and clout.

Why do you say that? Nokia has already gotten a couple of billion from MSFT in advertising, last i checked their sales have been going up for the past couple of quarters and MSFT has deep enough pockets to subsidize if not outright give Lumia phones to the carriers for free, all that is a great boon to Nokia.

Like it or not Nokia will live on if nothing else as the mobile hardware division of MSFT while RIM bleeds out with sales dropping and nothing really compelling on the horizon. With MSFT having a virtual lock on the enterprise market RIM was VERY stupid not to partner with MSFT but instead I have a feeling they’ll go the way of Palm.

That’s excluding matched marketing dollars (this is for all WP OEMs) and the intangible cost of not having to build their own ecosystem from scratch.

The capital investment is like a medium term loan from Microsoft, which beats the hell out of raising capital with a bad credit rating.

At the end of the day though the specifics of the deal are behind closed doors, so we can’t know for sure. Its certainly more than a one way dump of cash, Microsoft is too smart for that.

Nokia is interesting because its practically been implicitly purchased by Microsoft, they need Nokia to have a chance with WP so they have an interest in then being alive. Its like having a rich uncle.

The details may not have been disclosed, which made some large Nokia investors not very pleased, but the overall structure of the contract is present in Nokia’s financial statements.

Nokia ends up having to match dollar per dollar what MS invests initially on WP promotion and what not, and a net sum of half a billion euros on top of that. And that is a baseline, even if Nokia does not sell a single Lumia. Nokia does get an initial capital injection, so that their books don’t look shittier during the WP transition. But they have to pay it back at loan shark interest rates, basically.

So the situation is more akin to Nokia having to pay Microsoft to be “owned” by them, as far as the smart phone market is concerned that is.

That’s aside from the benefit to Nokia from moving Lumia devices, and in that light, it makes your “at least half a billion dollars net” statement a flat out falsehood.

Basically what this boils down to is that Microsoft in the future will receive a net of royalties, if Nokia is able to ramp up their volumes to go above and beyond the baseline, while at the same time Nokia is extracting revenue and profit off of those devices.

This is a fantastic deal for Nokia, and it would’ve been a fantastic one for BBRY had they not been so stubborn.

BBRY needed a strong partner with loads of cash, but they stubbornly and foolishly turned down Microsofts olive branch. Now they will die, Nokia will live, and the Canadian former powerhouse will be picked apart by the vultures.

In that case they would be just another Microsoft OEM battling with Nokia over the little interest consumers have shown Windows Phone, while being dependant on cash from redmond. Microsoft on the other hand would assimilate blackberry technologies to improve their own services. I’m not sure that’s so much better.

In that case they would be just another Microsoft OEM battling with Nokia over the little interest consumers have shown Windows Phone, while being dependant on cash from redmond.

A possibility, but also a possibility is that they could’ve grown their own share apart from Nokia. The market is certainly big enough for both Nokia to sell and for BBRY to sell. Especially if they targeted different segments of the market.

Its impossible to know now things would’ve actually turned out, but I don’t think it could’ve been much worse or tragic than this.

Microsoft on the other hand would assimilate blackberry technologies to improve their own services. I’m not sure that’s so much better.

BBRY technologies like BES would almost certainly be phased out in favor of EAS. One could argue maybe BBM could’ve been integrated when it mattered, but I’m not really sure it does.

Those two things aside its unclear to me what BBRY could bring to the table, this would more than likely have been a greater benefit to BBRY than to MSFT.

Although we, the users, can second guess the strategy of an innovating company, it should not do so it-self.

Partnering with Microsoft did not seem to fit. Microsoft needed a brand with high recognition in the hand-set consumers market and they got it with Nokia. Black Berry has traditionally been a brand aimed at the corporate market.

Black Berry did not rolled-out their current OS. They bought it (QNX). What they did was to adapt it to a mobile environment with touch interface and seeing this as a better solution than doing the same with their own in-house developed stuff which they had at the time.

QNX is still a contender in the real-time OS arena. And now, much of the grunt work for a touch interface and mobile networking has been done.

The PlayBook venture, albeit turning out to be a dead-end by it-self, has likely strengthened the BB10 user experience. The hardware design could be “recycled” as a front for interacting with a QNX run device.

BB10 and Android have the same conceptual root kernel – Unix via QNX on one hand and Linux on the other hand. Could a BB10/Android cross-development environment make things easier for Apps developers?

There is the messaging service which generates revenues. There were rumours of development of Android and iOS Apps to connect to this service. Have these Apps materialized?

Examining the sale of the whole or the parts is a tool which may lead to a better Black Berry with a higher probability of a long-term future. We will just have to wait and see what comes out of the exercise. The patent portfolio may/may not be a distinct saleable part depending on how much of QNX and BB10 are based on it.

I can’t avoid comparing the current charts of size of mobile ecosystems to those of the desktop operating systems from the mid-1990s. Then, Windows was dominant with MacOS being a far second and many other ones (like AmigaOS) being on the verge of extinction and the next big ideas (like BeOS and NextStep) were just emerging.

We all know how the desktop ecosystem has evolved.

It’s not yet over for the mobile ecosystem. However, BlackBerry should no longer dream of being the dominant one. Can being a niche player still be a profitable venture? We will find out soon enough.

Although we, the users, can second guess the strategy of an innovating company, it should not do so it-self.

Of course it should. What does that even mean? Any company which isn’t actively thinking about its long term prospects will be dead in the long term.

BBRY is a chief example of how they had the advantage of hindsight (seeing Nokia wallow in MeeGo for years, seeing Palm crumble)and still did not adapt their strategy.

It was a bold move to go it alone, and would’ve been historic if they had achieved it. Ultimately, the CEO took a gamble and lost.

Partnering with Microsoft did not seem to fit. Microsoft needed a brand with high recognition in the hand-set consumers market and they got it with Nokia. Black Berry has traditionally been a brand aimed at the corporate market.

Microsoft taking a two pronged approach would have benefited both Windows Phone and BBRY. They get to diversify out of Nokia (who currently controls 80% of the market, which is Samsungesque and unhealthy) and BBRY gets a ready made ecosystem and support from Microsoft who basically prints money.

Black Berry did not rolled-out their current OS. They bought it (QNX). What they did was to adapt it to a mobile environment with touch interface and seeing this as a better solution than doing the same with their own in-house developed stuff which they had at the time.

Oh come on. QNX netted them the barebones. A full end to end mobile OS took a lot of work on their part which you admit. There is more engineering than just “a mobile touch screen”. There’s an entire platform and SDK, despite using ready made parts like Qt.

The tooling, documentation, and infrastructure to support all of it has to be in place ,and that isn’t cheap. Then you need to go out and evangelize a platform which has 0 devices out there (a hard proposition even for Microsoft who has the advantage of infinite cash).

QNX is still a contender in the real-time OS arena. And now, much of the grunt work for a touch interface and mobile networking has been done.

QNX being used in cars is absolutely useless to BBRY’s mobile prospects.

The PlayBook venture, albeit turning out to be a dead-end by it-self, has likely strengthened the BB10 user experience. The hardware design could be “recycled” as a front for interacting with a QNX run device.

That’s nice, but so far that has been a fruitless venture. Where is a Playbook running BB10? Does BBRY have the cash, or fortitude to stick it out while their ecosystem grows? Obviously the answer is no.

BB10 and Android have the same conceptual root kernel – Unix via QNX on one hand and Linux on the other hand. Could a BB10/Android cross-development environment make things easier for Apps developers?

That already exists, and no it didn’t make it easier. It flooded the app store with low quality bullshit which hurt discoverability and hurt the user experience for end users. The paradigms introduced by Android apps don’t necessarily map to those of BB10.

There is the messaging service which generates revenues. There were rumours of development of Android and iOS Apps to connect to this service. Have these Apps materialized?

No. Not yet. They are just starting to even announce them. What’s extraordinarily depressing is that BBRY’s only shining star is that they might one day become a WhatsApp competitor.

Examining the sale of the whole or the parts is a tool which may lead to a better Black Berry with a higher probability of a long-term future.

BBRY can cut off the dead weight, but it would likely mean divesting from mobile devices and focusing on niche services to extract revenue. That’s if they act fast.

For example, there was a report that enterprises in Australia where swapping out BBRY contracts for Windows Phones. That’s dangerous for BBRY and could undermine future plans to play a role in the enterprise.

It’s not yet over for the mobile ecosystem. However, BlackBerry should no longer dream of being the dominant one. Can being a niche player still be a profitable venture? We will find out soon enough.

I’m convinced they can be profitable, but I don’t think it will be in mobile handsets. Maybe supplementing Android and iOS roll outs in the enterprise, secure messaging via BBM, etc might be their way forward.

This is sad. BBRY is/was burning but they never jumped off of the burning platform.

What I essentially meant was that with the critical decisions ahead of them, BlackBerry cannot and shouldn`t revisit their past decisions like “What if we had made a deal with Microsoft?”.

Yes, BlackBerry is in a though spot:

If they let the QNX platform go, then they become just another handset manufacturer with a choice of either Android or Windows Phone for their OS. They can look at the Nokia-Microsoft deal as it progressed to get a feeling of where this might led them.

A move to Android/Windows Phone for their OS could imply letting BBM go as well. Google and Microsoft would likely be glad to get rid of a competitor in the messaging arena.

They could also let their handset design/manufacturing umbrella go. This would mean moving into fully open-sourcing QNX/BB10 or forming alliances with other manufacturers.

One issue with QNX is brand awareness by the common user. Maybe they should request the car manufacturers, the medical equipment manufacturers, etc. to display a “Powered by QNX” type message at boot-up. They could also refresh their QNX DemoCD and released it into the wild 0- although there is little hope that QNX will ever become a force in the desktop arena.

BB10 is much better and more mature than WP8, and more pleasant to use. It is probably too early for it, as only the high end devices were released. It also has more developer support than Windows Phone given it’s easier to port apps from the other OSs.

I don’t think there is much hope of anything going to change though, and the best route they could take at this point is to allow other companies to license the OS, which I don’t think is gonna happen.

I agree. BB10 is the nicest smartphone OS I’ve used. The on-screen keyboard is fantastic. Honestly, I’m not sure what else BlackBerry could have done. They released a great product as soon as it was ready. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to even get people to try it out.

I remain convinced that if people just used it for a day or two, they’d jump in droves. I’ve had the Z10 since February. It’s just fantastic.

Does anyone else think these two would make a good match… both are ailing in terms of sales and could do with some better differentiation – HTC on the software side, Blackberry on the Hardware side (arguably).

But what is the angle? What is the selling point? Pretend you work in a phone shop and I come in, my Android is getting a little long in the tooth and I’m looking for something new…sell it to me. What does Blackberry give me, the non enterprise consumer, that Android and iOS does not?

Because from what I have read pretty much all the killer features of Blackberry require a backend that Joe and Sally simply won’t have or are features they won’t care about. Remember that thanks to familiarity and inertia its hard to get people to give up something they already know how to use so it can’t just be a little better or close enough, it has to have some features that will really make me reach for my wallet but so far I haven’t heard of any.

But what is the angle? What is the selling point? Pretend you work in a phone shop and I come in, my Android is getting a little long in the tooth and I’m looking for something new…sell it to me. What does Blackberry give me, the non enterprise consumer, that Android and iOS does not?

Because from what I have read pretty much all the killer features of Blackberry require a backend that Joe and Sally simply won’t have or are features they won’t care about. Remember that thanks to familiarity and inertia its hard to get people to give up something they already know how to use so it can’t just be a little better or close enough, it has to have some features that will really make me reach for my wallet but so far I haven’t heard of any.

As someone who recently switched from Android to BB10 on the Q5, perhaps I can help

Versus Android, the main point of using BB10 would be that you get a feature-complete and ready to use package out of the box, instead of having to install third-party apps and tweak lots of settings in order to get a comfortable user experience.

To be more precise, as compared to untweaked Android, BB10 has excellent battery life, a more complete feature set, good performance, no crapware, a clearer and more efficient UI (though the gestures do take a day or two to get used to), and easily available handsets with physical keyboards for those who feel more comfortable with them. Also, one can hope that vertical integration will allow for a better update situation than on Android, though this is speculation at this point.

As compared to fully tweaked Android, the gap is much smaller, but you get a more integrated package where features aren’t spread all over the place, and overall less bugs (though those that remain can be quite annoying). Besides, I’m not sure that your average Android customer would be able to apply the level of tweaking that I did on my former Android phone, so for him, good defaults have a value too.

If we now compare BB10 to iOS, you get a larger choice of handset, more customization abilities, and a more efficient interface where frequently used messaging features are more easily accessed than by constantly going through the application grid. It is, in my opinion, a good middle ground between Android’s “build your own handset” and iOS’ “we know what you want, trust us”.

Overall, BB10 also has the usability edge over iOS in my opinion, since I spend less time WTFing against stupid design decisions or looking for hidden controls whenever I have to do something on my Q5 than on an iPhone. But these are close, as BB10 has the gestures going against him on the usability front, and perhaps more important I don’t own an iOS device, so anytime I pick one up, I have to rediscover that OS’ quirks. Thus, your experience may be different for that one.

Uhhhh…what tweaking? Its already been shown that more than half the Android devices never download an app so folks are obviously happy with them as is, and I don’t know how it is there but most of the phones I’ve dealt with in the states have had very little crapware.

Now that said you make it seem like being able to just download an app and change the way my phone works is a bad thing when in reality its one of the things I love the most about my Android!

A “better feature set” or “ready to use OOTB” really aren’t selling points and certainly not enough to get a Joe Normal like myself to switch to your product. This is the problem BB has, what they NEED is a whiz bang feature that will wow the crowd or make them hip, like Siri for Apple or the dancing droid, instead from what you are describing nearly all your selling points are under the hood. BB really doesn’t have an obvious selling point like the big two and honestly the numbers reflect that.

Uhhhh…what tweaking? Its already been shown that more than half the Android devices never download an app so folks are obviously happy with them as is, and I don’t know how it is there but most of the phones I’ve dealt with in the states have had very little crapware.

Almost every Android cellphone sold around here (France) comes with average to terrible OEM skins (Samsung Touchwiz, HTC Sense…), unremovable preinstalled apps for various local services, and a few carrier-specific apps too if you buy them together in operator bundles (which I don’t). Nexus phones are an exception, but they are relatively hard to find outside of Google Play.

Now that said you make it seem like being able to just download an app and change the way my phone works is a bad thing when in reality its one of the things I love the most about my Android!

Yes, being able to tweak everything is great, being forced to on the other hand not so much… Basically, Android is like desktop Linux : the best of tweakability, the worst of usability. Except that contrary to desktop Linux, it actually runs on more than 1% of the phones out there

A “better feature set” or “ready to use OOTB” really aren’t selling points and certainly not enough to get a Joe Normal like myself to switch to your product. This is the problem BB has, what they NEED is a whiz bang feature that will wow the crowd or make them hip, like Siri for Apple or the dancing droid, instead from what you are describing nearly all your selling points are under the hood. BB really doesn’t have an obvious selling point like the big two and honestly the numbers reflect that.

Well, for that you have the timeshift camera feature, the unified messaging Hub, or the virtual keyboard of the Z10 which is apparently one of the best out there. But I honestly think that such “shiny” features only guide impulse purchases : I know of no iOS user around me that uses Siri for other purposes than impressing friends, and your inability to name a specific killer feature of Android is telling.

Besides, I am sorry to tell you, but if you know which OS your phone runs and use more than 10% of the functionality of that OS, you really aren’t Joe Normal.

Ohhh…okay I see the problem. You see here in the states? We really don’t see that very much, in fact now that so many are going prepaid (because frankly the plans have gotten crazy priced over here, with insane caps and nasty overage charges) most of us aren’t getting our phone from the carrier, you either just buy the phone new and get a prepaid SIM card or pop on Craigslist and grab one there. My LG frankly came with stock Android, no add-ons of any kind, and playing with customers phones I’ve found theirs to be the same.

As for “having” to tweak? again with stock Android not so much, most of us download and try tweaking apps because they are recommended by friends and family. Being the “resident computer genius” in my group I’m the one always trying new things and recommending them, such as Comodo Mobile Security (not only protects you from malware but has some sweet anti-theft tools along with an optional software manager and memory optimizer) and Comodo Battery Saver (integrates with the former and lets ME decide when and where my 3G and Wifi is active, really stretches out my battery time) but it isn’t like I HAD to download those, my phone ran just fine with stock android, i just wanted to try them, just as the default browser works okay but I prefer Dolphin browser because its more feature rich.

But again you are not naming any “oh wow!” kind of features, nothing wrong with the 3MP camera that came with my android, I have a slider so the keyboard thing really isn’t a selling point, and you have the HUGE hurdle of nobody writing squat for BB10 whereas i have a bazillion apps I can choose from with my android. i hear you can run Android apps on a BB but they don’t run well, being slower and glitchy compared to running native which for an emulator is to be expected.

Oh and “Joe Normal” which for the record i deal with and sell to 6 days a week? yeah they really DO know their phone is an Android, they just can’t tell gingerbread from ice cream sandwich from an ice cream sundae. You really have to give Google credit, all those dancing droid commercials and billboards have really made Android a name brand, heck i had a little old lady come into the shop on Friday and when she saw my phone running on the table she said “Oh you have an Android phone? I got one too” and we ended up comparing apps for 10 minutes before she dropped off her laptop LOL.

BlackBerry 10 gives you a new experience compared to the old and boring Android and iOS. It also gives you _the_ best soft keyboard ever made (I’ve used them all – iOS, Windows Phone, Android variants, Meego Harmattan, etc) making it a real communication powerhouse. It’s the first device to make typing fun.

It also gives you the BlackBerry hub which is a very nice “all in one” mail/message/notification page, accessible from anywhere and anytime in the OS.

BlackBerry Z10/Q10 also comes with exchangable batteries and micro sd slots. The device root file system and sd cards can be encrypted for securing your data (and you don’t need BES for that).

You can also do fine granular access rights for applications, unlike other OS:es (though Android 4.3 seems to have gotten support for it now – even though it’s a bit hidden). So it’s entirely possible to limit what applications can access, etc.

What it doesn’t have are, for example: Instagram, Viber, and some minor other applications. But it does have Skype, Whatsapp, WeChat, and more. Viber should be released for BlackBerry 10.2 in the autumn accordingly to Viber themselves (as far as I know).

Dropbox, Box, etc, are all built in as we expect these days. The services are accessible through other applications if the user allows just that.

Did you miss the article on OSNews where 47 thousand apps were submitted by one developer? The BB10 marketplace is a sham, and developers are not flocking to it by any means. I challenge you to prove otherwise.

You miss the point. You should focus on the QUALITY and not on the quantity. The user does not care if the software is submitted by a single or by one hundred companies. The user demands a solution for his problem. Give him the solution and take his money. Simple as that. Quality apps are rare in ios and android markets too.

BB10 has been out for a little time and only the expensive high end devices were release. Nokia already has the 920 and 620 while the Q5 and Z5 aren’t even out.

Remember how much it took for Microsoft/Nokia to go from horrible sales to almost decent.

That’s a good point and I am inclined to agree. The questions at this point are:

– Do they have time

– Do they want time

Is there a will in the company to even try to make BB10 a successful platform from a consumer devices perspective? They have more cash on hand than Nokia, but they don’t have a strong ecosystem set up yet and that’s going to burn some serious cash.

They’re well run financially which helps in times of transition, so they’re actually in relatively decent shape should they attempt to go with Android or Windows Phone. I don’t think they can go it alone, at least not without something else bringing in cash.

The “we’re for sale” admission by the company was a mistake, especially since it seems that now there’s no buyer for BBRY as a whole (Brand isn’t valuable, patents are, but devices aren’t).

To me its in the same vein as Siemens was with their stake in NSN, no one wants a 50% stake of a venture, so they were forced to sell it to Nokia for pennies on the dollar.

For the large market shelf space in the phone store matters and what your friends have matters too. Blackberry had a reputation of being those big corporate phones those business guys carry around. I’m not sure if they ever shook that. One guy I work with who had 3 blackberries before switched to a galaxy s3 at the beginning of this year

Nokia seems to be rich in marketing cash, their phones are prominently there with htc and samsung (at the at&t store at least). Funny enough hardly anyone is buying them and I personally still don’t kmow anyone who has a windows phone I see mostly older iphones and newer samsungs (2 people have those huge notes!). Nokia can’t be in a good position regarding profitability at this time.

I don’t see nokia going anywhere. At this point they and MS are hugely trying to buy their way into the market with a few percent to show for it. That never bodes well for profitability and one or both of the players are taking the hit on this somewhere.

One thing going for MS and somewhat for Nokia is that apple seems to be a slowly foundering ship. Huge install base but not keeping up with the market. By accident MS and Nokia could find themselves stumbling into 2nd place due to the vacuum that maybe seems to be forming.

I don’t see nokia going anywhere. At this point they and MS are hugely trying to buy their way into the market with a few percent to show for it. That never bodes well for profitability and one or both of the players are taking the hit on this somewhere.

Buying your way in to the market is the only way to win. BB10 was by most accounts a reasonably good phone OS, BBRY just didn’t have the financial ability to push an ecosystem.

Microsoft routinely pays developer porting costs, subsidizes marketing, partners with chip vendors (they did the legwork on optimizations for Qualcomm for example) and works very closely with the OEM to get the devices out of the door. Both HTC and Nokia have remarked that Microsoft made regular trips to help their product teams get to launch. Nokia launched a Windows Phone like 10 months after it announced its strategy.

One thing going for MS and somewhat for Nokia is that apple seems to be a slowly foundering ship. Huge install base but not keeping up with the market. By accident MS and Nokia could find themselves stumbling into 2nd place due to the vacuum that maybe seems to be forming.

I’m not so bearish on Apple yet, they’re a great competitor and I think its too soon to tell whether WP will overtake them. I don’t like trying to project beyond a few quarters only because its comically unreliable, but we’ll see.

Apple is at a cross roads and has a very delicate line to walk, but they’re a smart company.

Them being outpaced by the market is likely a function of the mature market owning less as a percentage of the volume moving forward.

I’d be interested to see an OEM by OEM breakdown of Apple vs Android and seeing where Apple loses to a single one.

BB10 is probably the best mobile platform on the market, with strong emphasis on security (do a comparison with the lack of any specifications on iOS and Android). It’s RIM’s past that disoriented the company. They have been aiming for the “pro user” market, or more clearly: industrial, bussiness users and government agencies. They acted as still being the king of the market while they were not.

They have the best phone out there, maybe it’s the only one with so many developing platforms, with many virtues of the underlying qnx, with innovative features but still they fail in something important: great products need great management.

There is a strong resemblance with the story of DEC – AlphaAXP – OpenVMS. They also believed that a great product will sell by itself.

Both RIM (BBRY) and DEC defied Porter’s 5 diamonds. DEC evaporized, we just have to wait and see what shall happen with BBRY.

What they should have done was piggyback on the success of other hardware providers and create a secure BBM software ecosystem for their corporate users. Basically become a way for the larger corporations to ‘corporatize’ and secure iOS and Android handsets. Sure, it might have required a bit of hardware or OS support, but RIM could have partnered with Apple or one or more of the Android handset manufacturers.

I read recently that this is exactly what RIM is now trying to do – 4-5 years too late.